Page 32 of Adrift!
“Just you,” he murmured. “And me.”
Anticipation had her leaning forward even as she said, “With the situation and everything, this might be the worst time…”
“Or the only,” he agreed.
The kiss felt as simply miraculous as a rosebud unfurling, and Remy wished she could hold onto the moment forever. But even as her fingers tightened greedily on Ikaryo’s, he gentled his hold, his thumb rubbing a slow circle in her palm. The friction raised a tingle that radiated all the way to her deepest self.
Nothing mystical, she thought hazily, or mechanical. Just him.
She opened her mouth under his, and he intensified the kiss, tongue and breath adding to the intoxicating swirl like he was mixing her into the perfect cocktail.
He skimmed his hand up the side of her face to bury his fingers in her hair, tilting her head into his fist. His lips on theside of her neck were hot and so soft; she couldn’t hold back a keening sound of need. When she leaned closer, anchoring herself with a hand spread across his chest, his answering groan was exactly the same note, an octave lower, and his pulse pounded in rhythm with hers.
She wasn’t a naïve dreamer anymore, who needed flowery perfection, hearts beating as one. But this moment felt like the origin of a new universe, and she would’ve sworn she saw stars.
Sure enough, when she opened her eyes, his augments glowed with sparkles that shimmered across his skin, casting a silver-blue light across both of them, and a subsonic hum vibrated through her.
The sensations shook her beyond the physical—not just the cosmic kiss, or the way his extra enhancements responded to her touch, creating feedback loops of pleasure that seemed to echo endlessly between them with the promise of ecstasy. More than that, when he also opened his eyes, the shining half-moons reminded her some heavenly bodies were close enough to touch—if she wanted.
“Is this okay?” she whispered against his lips, her hand hovering above the enhanced side of his face.
“More than.” His voice was rougher now, and all the more beautiful for the raw edge. “And you? With everything, the anomaly’s interference…”
Hand dropping to his tensed shoulder, she pulled back just enough to really look at him. “Do we think we’re being influenced by outside forces right now?”
He paused, and she realized that even with “everything”, she’d never felt safer than when he listened to her and considered the implications.
“I feel…” He tilted his head as if listening. “Like myself.” When he lifted his augmented hand, excited electrons still danced along the exposed components. “For so much of my life,‘myself’ was pieces falling to the wayside, flesh and home and dreams of what might be.”
Remy took his hand between both of hers and pressed his clenched knuckles against her lips. “Ikaryo…”
He unfurled his fingers to cup her jaw. “But with you, that is…enough. No, more than enough. I feel like I’ve finally found all of myself.”
When she let out a shaky breath, he brushed his thumb over her lower lip, making the rest of her shudder at the satiny caress.
“May I show you, Remy?” he murmured. “All of myself.”
A surge of desire hotter than stage lights shot through her veins. “Please.”
With a moment’s awkward first-time fumble, their eager hands together unsealed his crew uniform down his chest.
She caught her breath again at the tattooed symbols revealed in the gap. “So many.”
“Each one was meant as a talisman against losing and forgetting.”
“They are beautiful.” Stradling him, she pushed the uniform off his shoulders to find more tattoos. Where skin met cybernetic scars, the markings sometimes continued the lines of circuitry before melding into artistic designs, a defiant reminder that he had survived, whole and handsome through the end of a world—and he’d continued on.
With his assistance, she kept uncovering him and the silent story of his journeys until he was naked beneath her. His lean strength triggered an appreciative hum low in her throat—and a deeper, secret echo between her legs.
He leaned back, arms flexing behind his head as he preened beneath her regard, and his eyes narrowed to sly, ice-gray slits. “Are we compatible?”
“Only one way to find out.”
Pushing back upright, she took a step away, toying flirtatiously with the tie of her robe. His molten-steel stare fixed on her, while his hand drifted to his hardening flesh.
That part of him seemed to have no augmentation…
Something between a gasp and giggle caught her throat when he abruptly surged to his feet and stalked closer, reaching for the scrap of silky fabric. “Let me,” he growled.
